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He was quiet then, gazing at me.
“I want to know if, in this year that we’ll be apart, I can at least have a meal with you once a week, or if we can walk together and—”
“You should grovel,” he stated.
“I will get on my knees right now if that will—”
Heavy sigh from him. “But that won’t give me what I want, what I need. To force distance now when all I wanted was to be close to you seems illogical.”
“Yes, it does,” I agreed quickly, suddenly hopeful. “Better to make me suffer where you can see me.”
He smiled then, unable not to.
“You could hit me if you wanted.”
His face, how quickly it changed with my words told me how horrifying he found that suggestion. “I would never physically harm you.”
I grinned at him. “I know, omega. You want to be claimed.”
“Of course I do, it’s all I ever wanted. But you—”
“I couldn’t risk anyone hurting you,” I said, and I could hear my voice cracking. “If I lost you, what would I do?”
“You didn’t think of me and what I needed.” He stood up, holding my gaze the whole time. “You thought about yourself, about what losing your mate would feel like, but you didn’t think about how your rejection hurt me.”
“Your safety was paramount. I couldn’t—”
“You ripped my heart into pieces,” he said, crossing the small space to stand over me.
“I’ll fix it.”
“Maybe it can’t be fixed.”
I shook my head. “Impossible. Hearts are stronger than that, and yours is one of the strongest. It has to be, because you’re my mate and I’m going to do things that are going to make it stop and start back up in regular frequency.”
He grunted. “That, I don’t doubt.”
I cleared my throat as I slowly reached up to take his hand. “I bet you, when your parents hear about this, about what I did, they’ll agree with how I handled this. There’s no way they would have wanted you in harm’s way.”
“Nothing matters but what I want,” he assured me. “And if you’re my mate—”
“I am your mate.” I nearly growled it at him, my voice guttural and hoarse as I tightened my grip on his hand. I didn’t like the “if” in that sentence. “There’s no question. You’re mine.”
“Then we will be together from now on.”
My heart was in my throat, and all I could do was nod.
“You will never leave me.”
I nodded again, quickly.
“You will never keep me in the dark. You will tell me what you think and feel, and if you slip up, if you lie or do something really stupid like thinking for me or making decisions about my welfare without consulting me… I will leave you.”
Leave me. Like my father. Leave me like I was nothing. Just the thought of that, to be abandoned by the most important person in my life, gutted me. “Don’t leave me,” I barely managed to get out.
“Then you keep me with you, always. At your side, always,” he stressed as he sat down in my lap, straddling my thighs. “Yes?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
